The secret about the Olympic city that became a ghost town

I’ll let you in on a little secret about Paris: it’s left town.

Perhaps I should rather say that Paris has developed a split personality. Where the Olympics are, in venues strewn across the suburbs, Paris is bustling with people and filled with a Babelesque babble of voices, as Paris mostly is.

But beyond the glow of the Olympic halo, Paris is empty and quiet as rarely before.

I say this as someone who has had the privilege of visiting Paris frequently over the last 10 or 12 years. I’m aware of how Parisians desert their city in mid-summer, retreating to the country or the beach. I’ve seen and luxuriated in that Paris.

But I’ve never seen Paris this empty and this quiet. In the neighbourhoods I know, half the shops are shut and the other half are wondering if they should shut.

The cafes and bistros put out their serried tanks of tables and chairs on the footpaths as usual, but conspicuous by their absence are people sitting on them. Engaged in casual conversation – there’s plenty of time – restaurateurs and waitstaff say business is half its usual volume.

Police and military are plentiful, but idle. At the best of times, Paris police do not look so much like they are policing as discussing Sartre. Now I think they really are.

The metro is busy, but not insufferably so. Hire bike ranks are full of unridden bikes; that’s unusual. It is possible to walk a whole block without catching a whiff of cigarette smoke; that’s also unusual.